Team Building
This article is for people trying to construct good teams. Order Considerations Usually when building a team, the order of which you arrange your knights by might not seem very important. This is usually true but there are ways to maximize the damage output and efficiency of your knights. Especially for harder maps. First of all, the general consensus is that you should put knights with Area of Effect skills first and then single target knights. While it may seem that your knights attack during the attacks of other knight (especially while you have fast forward on) the damage calculations are done before they attack (at the start of turn actually). Therefore if you have a knight with a single target skill before one with an Area of Effect skill and both activate their skills, the single target skill might kill the enemy and the weaker AoE skill will target the remaining one/two enemies. This depends on multiple factors obviously; how many enemies there are, the damage multiplier and how many targets the AoE skill has. This can all influence how you want to build your team though having the AoE users first is generally better. Exceptions Multi-hit Skills: Knights like Rosy Lily and Ionocidium (Christmas) with skills which attack multiple times can be placed somewhere in-between as their skills have the capability to attack different enemies making them good at both single target and multi target attacking. Target Based Skills: Knights like Kiwi Fruit and Apricot (Christmas) with damage multipliers which vary based on the number of enemies are more lenient in where they could be placed. This is because they imitate the role of any knight they could fill in that role. Attack buff on skill activation Chocolate Lily and Gerbera: The attack buff is applied at the start of turn and not when an ability is triggered and the +ATK is displayed. This means that you do not have to place them last to get the most out of their abilities and they should be placed according to their role in the team. Abilities versus Total Power Auto-sorting will sort your knights based on total power (aka overall force). This is useful if you want to see the total power of your knights though it never takes into account the abilities of knights it sorts. The synergy of abilities have an invisible increase of power which greatly outweigh the displayed number which represents the total amount of stats in that squad. The synergy between the abilities should be prioritized above total power as a team made up of a random collection of knights with no synergy at all will have a much worse performance (usually) than a team with a dedicated purpose. Keep in mind that HP are always much larger than Atk which is higher than Def. Because of that, relatively high HP flower knights will appear to have high overall power even if their Atk and/or Def is lackluster. For example, 5* Lavender has huge overall force because of her massive HP, but she's outclassed by many other characters in other areas. The point is that overall power is not a good gauge for knowing how good a character is. What Nurture Ability/Trait to use? While it might not seem important which Trait you run it is a factor that matters when you want to maximize the power of your squads. See Promotion Ability. Speed UP/DOWN (±20 Speed): *Use when you want to make speed run teams or when balancing speed. Healing Boost (+25-30% Healing and can heal to 105-125% max HP): *Knights with draining skills or auto-heal abilities can utilize this ability to it's fullest. High skill rate is important for drain skill users. Evade is important for auto-healers like Purslane. First Turn Attack Boost (10-15% ATK increase 1st turn): *If you're too lazy to think about what ability to use this is the trait of choice. This is the general all purpose trait which works on every single knight in existence and every knight that will ever be released. *The best knights to use this trait though are knights with powerful turn one abilities/teams which utilize turn one abilities. *This is the go-to ability for Whaleship characters that won't be doing deck battles but may contribute to Whale Cannon Burst. *Should be your #3 choice for damage output. Critical Damage Up (5-10% Critical damage increase): *This increases damage instead of crit rate. Worthwhile only if you can max out crit rate (80%). Can be easy to work with for self crit-boosting characters like Apple and Acacia. *Should be your #2 choice for damage output. Weakness Damage Up (5-20% increased damage to type bonus): *Should really only be used when you know the weakness of your enemies. Should therefore only be used when building teams for Ultimate Missions, Whaleship, etc. *You can make better use of this with added attribute abilities such as what Sensitive Plant and Pygmy Water Lily offer. *Of all the traits, this gives the biggest damage boost, but only 6*s can use it. *Unlike the crit damage boosting trait, this one would be activating 100% of the time in ideal situations. *Should be your #1 choice for damage output. Defend Rate Up (2.25-5% Defend Rate Up and 2.5-10% increased reduction while defending): *Could add some extra survivability to frailer knights. First Turn Attack Up is usually better though. *Damage reduction only works when "defend" triggers. *Does not reduce damage as much as provocation would, but provocation is 6*-only. *Good for the debuffers in a debuff team. Provocation (Force enemies to attack you, gain 4-16% damage reduction): *'Extremely' good if the character has evade and/or a drain skill. But only usable by 6*s. *Protects the other characters that don't have provoke. *Damage reduction is constant unlike defend rate up which only reduces damage when defending. *Can be used to activate certain abilities like Royal Water Lily's which only take effect if the character was attacked. It'd still activate even if the damage was evaded, negated, etc. *A full team of 6*s can all use provoke to reduce everyone's damage. This strategy is not effective if the enemy can wipe your team quickly though. Types of Teams Debuff Utilizing the ability that reduces the attack of enemies (up to 70% reduction) and often having one knight with an HP drain ability or self-heal + evade, this type of team is considered one of the best archetypes of teams yet it is preferred only for most boss fights as opposed to full blown subjugations. Skill Rate Utilizing multiple knights which increase the skill trigger rate of the team to maximize skill damage. *There are a couple subtypes: **1.2x Skill Rate: Utilizing knights who permanently increase the skill rate of the team, usually 5 knights with is for a passive 2x skill rate. **1.36x Skill Rate: Specific only to whaled 6*s with max skill rate like Nerine and Christmas Rose. One of these characters can make a good substitute for first-turn-only 1.65x skill rate characters if your team is expected to last more than one turn. **1st Turn: Using knights like Daisy and Cymbidium while sometimes also using other knights who increase the skill rate of the team. Having two of these characters is usually enough to make up for a full team having level one skill levels. **3rd Turn: The least common one as it requires both Moonflower and Tachibana and requires the squad to survive until the 3rd turn where they will get 2.4x skill rate for only that turn. Building around this archetype is impractical considering how Moonflower loses that ability after simply blooming. Dodge Utilizing knights with the evade ability to avoid damage. *Some strategies involing dodge: **Pure Dodge: Using five knights with dodge. No rarity requirement. **Dodge + Support: Using one or more dodging knights and supporting them with knights like Soapwort (-skill rate for enemies) and Barrenwort (miss rate for enemies) to maximize their survivability. Works much better if the dodgers can provoke. **Provoking Dodger: Having a 6* that can evade with the provocation trait equipped. Even one character in the team like this will increase the survivability of the whole team immensely. Critical Hits Utilizing knights with the ability to increase critical strike chance to increase overall damage without needing skill activations. *It has two main subtypes: **Whole party crit: Using many party wide critical rate up abilities to increase the overall damage of those knights. **Focused crit: Focusing on knights such as Acacia or Apple, which become your main sources of damage you support them with bonus critical damage as well to squeeze out every bit of damage you can. Solar Drive Utilizing knights which increase the damage of solar blast during subjugation. As solar blast abilities stack multiplicatively doing this results in massive damage with solar blast. Useful mostly when you lack the knights to make a decently powerful combat squad. Solar Drive teams typically don't deal much damage unless it's packed with 6*s that boost Solar Drive damage. Solar Drive characters usually lack the offensive abilities to deal damage on their own, so you should focus all efforts to boost Solar Drive's effectiveness and don't expect the team to kill off any survivors. Therefore, you'll want the light gauge at 300% before they fight. Using characters like Dogwood and Japanese Apricot to boost the light gauge at the start is vital to making these teams effective. Solar Drive is a short animation, so it can be the fastest way to clear some stages. Speed Speed teams have a unique role in the game. Rather than being effective at battle, they are excellent for speed running (pun not intended). The super fast team should reach the goal before the other teams even fight. With clever positioning, the speed team will plow through a fraction of the mobs on the map, reach the goal, then the slower other teams will ignore the enemy nodes while picking up all panel items and chests. To make a speed team, you need (1) at least five characters with speed-boosting abilities, and (2) the other teams need to be populated with your slowest characters and the Speed Down Promotion Ability. Simply using fast characters like Tall Stewartia (700 speed) will not work because their team's speed will cap out at their average (~700). This makes Dipladenia great for speed teams because she's an Event girl with +100 speed that anybody can get at any time. That said, event girls like Belladonna and Edelweiss with +50 speed abilities are ineffective for speed teams and shouldn't be sought after if you want to make a speed team. Subtypes/Support Teams that have mechanics that support/benefit from other archetypes: *Attack up on Solar Drive: **When having a full team made up of solar blast users having a squad which benefits of that is often helpful when you lack powerful units. *Shine Crystals: **Supports solar blast by filling up gauge easily. Do note that squads can have multiple archetypes mixed/interchanged as well due to knights having multiple abilities. Notable Knights Not in any particular order. 6 Star *Dusty Miller (Christmas): Absolutely guaranteed to deal insane damage on the first turn. *Dendrobium: Exceptionally good for turn one/sweep strategies. 2x skill rate and guaranteed 2nd attack on the first turn make her deadly. *Chloranthus (Christmas): Same as Dendrobium. Usually called Sendrobium because of this. Has terrible damage potential when not buffed. *Dusty Miller: Crit + skill rate + multi-part skill means she's capable of dealing large damage. *Sensitive Plant and Pygmy Water Lily: Adds tons of attributes for the party. Can actually hit all weakness on their own. *Flowering Dogwood: 100% light gauge boost at the start is very helpful for normal subjugations and Whaleship. *Saffron: Absurdly easy to use when given provocation. Can handle hard fights all on her own because of dodge + counter. Because her main source of damage is counter, there's not as much pressure to boost her Atk, so she does just as well even when surrounded by lower rarity characters. Not suitable for speed clearing. *Red Ginger: Evade + skill rate + counter + drain skill makes her well-suited to be the key member in a debuff team. *Acacia: Highest crit modifier for self, the best knight for crit based teams and also contributes greatly to combat efficiency by having debuff and 20% ATK for party members. *Habranthus: Skill rate + negate damage + added Blunt attribute. Very easy to use. *Curcuma: Added Slash attribute. On the first turn, everyone gets 70% Atk and 1.65x skill rate. Convenient for first-turn killing teams. Rarity Growth *Rainbow Rose: Disgustingly massive damage output when she goes through Rarity Growth. Often outclasses natural 6*s in damage. *Hare's Ear: Similar to Rainbow Rose, but Hare's Ear existed earlier on. *Baikamo, Camellia and Aibika: After Rarity Growth, behave just like Saffron. *Holly (Swimsuit): After Rarity Growth, boosts light gauge and adds Pierce. Very easy to work with. 5 Star *Tall Stewartia: Usually Was the preferred 5* for debuff teams, even for debuff teams which involve 6*s as she has drain to provide extra surivability. (Was superceded by Dalmatian Bellflower years ago due to having dodge.) *Pouch Flower and Barrenwort: High HP and can make the enemy Miss. *Apple: Self-boosting crit rate makes it easy to max her crit rate. *Lavender and Edelweiss: Event girls with incredibly high HP. Meaning you can get them for free and use them to beef up the Whaleship. *Dahlia, Green Bell, and Dragon Fruit: These characters decrease enemy attack power by 15%. Other 5*s are capable of only up to 10%, so these girls are vital to making a debuff party if you lack debuffing 6*s. *Rain Lily, Belladonna, Strelitzia, and Spring Star: Event girls that decrease one enemy's attack power by 10%. You will want them for making a poor man's debuff party specifically for Raid Bosses. Their only purpose in that regard is to debuff, so the real firepower can be from anyone, including drain or counter 6*s. Examples 1st *Dendrobium: (skill level 5 is an important factor here) with 100% skill rate 1st Turn (relevant calculation: 34*2*1.6=108.8% skill trigger rate 1st turn). Then because Dendrobium has 100% chance to attack again on the first turn she will always deal 4.8x damage to 3 enemies. *Saffron: Equipped with provocation has 20% damage reduction already. Saffron adds a lot of extra survivability for battles which last longer than one turn. Saffron is also the one deciding factor that make this squad able to solo the Kodaibana challenge map. *Ghost Weed: Skill Rate and Solar Blast (70% even) *Scotch Broom: More Skill Rate and Solar Blast also has bonus Shine Crystal Drop rate, chosen because of her synergy with basically every other knight in this setup. *Red Ginger: Skill rate, movement speed up and because she provides increased DPS and survivability post turn one. Squad Specifications: *Atk Boost: 99% to all 109% to Dendrobium. *Defense Boost: 22% to all +4% damage reduction (20% for Saffron) *Skill Rate: 1.6x (2x 1st turn for Dendrobium) *Solar Blast: 129% *Shine Crystal: +15% 2nd Note: Chocolate Cosmos should be replaced by Pouch Flower to maximize survivability of Saffron. Category:Guide